Students Urge Genocide Response

More than 200 student activists from across the country gathered in Boylston Hall this weekend for the December Darfur Conference, sponsored by the national student group Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND).

Over the weekend, STAND elected eight members to its national executive committee, launched a network connecting students fighting Darfur genocide, and kicked off a campaign to urge national politicians to take action on the issue.

Students from Harvard, Brandeis University, Georgetown University, and Wellesley College organized the anti-genocide conference, which brought college and high school students from around the country. They came to attend workshops and organize a plan to fight the genocide in Darfur region of Sudan, in which over 400,000 have died and 450 villages have been destroyed.

Patrick W. Shmitt, a senior at Georgetown, called on students to speak with one voice to end the genocide in Darfur.

“We need a national movement and a national message,” said Schmitt, who is executive director of the STAND executive committee.

“It’s going to take a lot of work to lead this movement. We’ll need to engage high school students, African-American communities, women, churches, mosques, and synagogues,” he added.

This weekend marks STAND’s third national conference. Georgetown’s chapter of STAND held conferences in February and August.

Weldon W. Kennedy, a senior at Brandeis who is president of the school’s STAND chapter, said the idea for the conference developed when he met with Harvard students in October at the Darfur Fast day in Boston.

At the conference, students heard from experts about the history of Darfur and its current situation.

On Friday night, panelists described the pattern of rape and murder in the western region of Sudan. Andrew B. Loewenstein, a human rights lawyer commissioned by the U.S. State Department to investigate the genocide in Darfur, talked about his interviews with refugees in Eastern Chad.

He said he heard stories of five-year-old African boys being “slaughtered like animals” or thrown into burning tents by the Janjaweed, Arab militia of armed horsemen sponsored by the Sudanese government. He said locals rape women as they leave the refugee camps to gather firewood, sometimes gang-raping up to 60 women at a time with animal whips.

“When you hear about this, you have a visceral reaction. You feel it in your gut,” said Sabine J. Ronc ’07, president of the Harvard Darfur Action Group.

Later that evening, STAND’s national executive committee was elected. The members will coordinate communication between STAND’s more than 200 chapters and develop a national strategy for lobbying Congress.

The conference launched the Genocide-Intervention Network (GI Network), which was started by a student at Swarthmore as a way to connect students from around the country.

In coordination with the Save Darfur Coalition and the GI Network, STAND introduced the “Power to Protect” campaign. From January through April, they hope to collect one million letters to deliver to Congress and the President. Their first goal is to pressure the House to pass the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, which would give $50 million to African Union forces.

Ilana R. Cohen, a senior who is secretary of the Brandeis STAND chapter, said that students have the potential to bring change.

“We can set a huge precedent for the world in terms of the promises we make and protecting one another in our international community,” Cohen said. “We can use our political voice for the people who don’t have one in Darfur.”

Schmitt emphasized that STAND is looking for a actual results.

“Darfur doesn’t need a noble failure—a bunch of good kids doing their best. It needs action that translates to change on the ground,” Schmitt said. “Students from Georgetown can’t stop genocide. But we’ll sure as hell do our part if you do yours.”